I need your grace, to remind me, to find my own
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: There is one question he hears asked over and over again. 1931  shortly after Rebellion Times  AU. Carlisle/Edward.


**Extended Summary:** This is set in the 1930's, during the year Edward returns to the Cullens. It makes more sense (and there are some inside details that ring more true) if you're familiar with **sparkle_ways**/**milliways_bar**'s Negative Space, but is fine as a standalone all on its own merit as well. It's the boys. Of course. Which is CarlisleEdward for anyone who's not yet aware of the moniker.

This is for Stephanie, who left me alone and adrift in their world, while she was at her first Dragon*Con in 2009 gettin' her geek on.

* * *

Edward closed the door to Carlisle's study decisively. Only the millisecond of pause, leaning back on it, before his hands raise betrayed some lingering uncertainty. The lingering sensation of being out of place and out of touch with absolution, or acceptance.

There is no answer to Carlisle's heard and ignore inquiry to his interruption. His fingers found the buttons at the top of his shirt. Perturbed confusion on the face before him doesn't deter the concert of his movement now that it has started.

He wonders if Carlisle can even feel himself coiling tighter, readying himself, preparing, trying to cool his expression for whatever this newest confession will be. There's almost a breath gathered in for steadying his self when Edward peels the shirt, slowly pulling it from his arms, dropping it over the back of a chair before the desk - and simply stands there.

For a long time. It feels far long than it is, until Carlisle manages to swallow, after a plethora of reactions and thoughts that bind Edward's feet where they are, and speaks.

* * *

"Edward?"

"You wanted to know."

If he'd done more than was readily apparent to the naked eye. If he'd changed even more than his eyes and his choices, somewhere that Carlisle couldn't see, somewhere he'd denied Edward's willingness before, too, in a way that waiting months would never dilute away. Questions that couldn't be asked, thoughts that couldn't be denied.

There were still borders and boundaries, still spaces to navigate, when even conversations could be complicated seas of silence and reluctance or abandon and over sharing on both their parts.

And still Edward stood there, now, half dressed before the desk.

_Still p_ - still the same as he had been before. At least on the outside.

Every move he made still sounding of the changes he didn't know the size or name of.

His thoughts aren't even a cohesive response. They're conversational, confessional, reaction filled .Too many of them in too many directions, tamping down and in on so many, that it's almost brusque with exhaustion and something else, something else he hasn't heard in his voice in years.

"Are you done, then?"

Edward shook his head, bronze hair shivering around his cheeks and ears, serious and somehow, warily. Looking, for a brief pass on conflicted features, all the child he has stopped being.

He stepped closer to the desk, leaning down, and Carlisle pulled slightly back. One hand, still the long fingers of a lifelong musician, lands in the center of a patient release form, and his eyes are going from it up to the face so much closer. Edward's eyes are honey-rose now, dark, dark and peerless in the shameless decent into his being from inches away.

"Touch me."

* * *

And then they are fucking like he is seventeen again.

All passion and desperation and only just enough restraint not to demolish everything they touch that is not each other. But they are doing it because he is past thirty and the best of both of them stopped existing when Edward walked out the door.

Because for as much as his skin is still flawlessly unmarked -

_the way Carlisle's control had snapped before his fingers had brushed Edward's bare shoulder; or the way Edward comes, decimating yet another desk, with a sound too close to a strangled sob_

- there has never been a day Edward wasn't already claimed.


End file.
